May 25, 2025
As a choir singer, I’m a Bass. I’ve told my fellow Bass singers in church that a certain number of us must always show up, because we’re the anchor. Not to take anything away from our friends in the other ranges, but if we’re absent, the depth and resonance suffer.
As a rower, my time spent in fours and eights was always in or near the front. We few, we happy few, provided the power to move the boat forward. The coxswain or the #1 directed our course, but without the collective drive of the rowers, momentum stalled.
As a system administrator or network engineer, I’ve been tasked with the unglamorous (yet essential) parts of IT: keeping servers patched, ensuring backups are secure, and guarding the boundary so threat actors don’t breach our network. Like the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones or Jack Nicholson’s General in A Few Good Men, we stand vigilant, ensuring risks are mitigated before they escalate.
In each of these roles, the common thread is stewardship — being responsible for something greater than yourself, ensuring the foundation is strong for those who rely on it.
But leadership is different from execution. When you transition into an IT leadership role, your job shifts from powering the boat to guiding those who provide the power. You have a (hopefully) fully appointed and capable team, and your role as a steward is to equip, mentor, and delegate effectively.
There will always be crises, and the temptation will remain to jump into the breach—to fix, patch, and protect as you always have. That instinct is why you got into IT in the first place. But true leadership requires discipline. It demands that you trust your team and empower them to step up while you focus on the broader vision.
Stewardship means ensuring that your IT ecosystem is resilient not because you do everything yourself, but because you enable others to succeed. It means taking a step back from the trenches and ensuring the systems, people, and processes you oversee can function smoothly — whether you’re there or not.
I was telling someone recently of a conversation I had with a mentor of mine years ago, about the career of IT leadership. He felt (and I agree) that tenure is less important than a wide-ranging set of experiences. He said, “You can be the person in the big chair at an organization for 35 years, or you can be the person who’s been in the big chair for 5 years each at 7 different organizations. Which do you think has more value?”
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau
So, when the next crisis arises, will you grab an oar, or will you steer the team forward?
